What do the Labour party need to do to stop their slow death?

[flashbac]

I'll start:

Starmer needs to stop acting like a rabbit in the headlights and actually stand for something. He has no charisma or gravitas. We want someone with a personality. Stand for something Starmer!

Stop pandering to the 'red wall'. Inspire people to vote for the party with some good policies instead of flip flopping about.

Have some inspiring and uplifting policies like:

• Free childcare for working parents
• making public transport normal and affordable
• subsidised green energy initiatives to help householders lower energy bills eg solar panels etc

And they NEED to distance themselves from that anti science TWAW stance. I'm all for being kind but a blanket dilution of what 'woman' means is regressive.

@ListeningQuietly
I just searched articles that said land taxes were rare.
Further searches showed pure land taxes in parts of Australia ( New South Wales), Estonia and Denmark. A slightly longer list with a version of a land tax.
It doesn’t seem to suggest the U.K. are outliers.
I can see many problems, farming being the most obvious.
There have been many more sensible approaches suggested on this thread.

The first article I searched was with The Economist.

Starmer needs to stop with the Farage-esque posing. How many pints?!
I'm a long term activist & the doorstepping here in the red fortress yields many thumbs down for the patronising posturing. Awaiting return of mugs with 'controls on immigration' eyeroll

@Andante57

While it sticks in the craw to see the richest in society squandering their wealth on fripperies, if they do pay their tax

Gaspard what do you consider to be fripperies?

Huge yachts, second homes in areas where locals can't find affordable housing, haute culture.

Blackberry
The USA, Canada, France and Germany all have land taxes.
Not sure what farming has to do with it.
The highest land values are urban.

Starmer needs to stop with the Farage-esque posing. How many pints?!

Could you explain what that relates too?

@IalwayswantedtobeBeth

Starmer needs to stop with the Farage-esque posing. How many pints?!

Could you explain what that relates too?

This stuff I can imagine

lalwayswantedtobeBeth

I am not against taxation but I do think that penalising someone who might be their families sole earner who is on £80,000 and putting them in the wealthy description
Is what I don’t agree with.

Blair seemed to understand that even if you were just starting out and were from a poorer background it was the idea of being able to own a car, a house that he wanted to put into everyone’s reach.
The problem with subsequent Labour governments was that once these people owned the house and car they became the enemy.

Any new tax like land tax seems like a great idea but like any other taxation I wonder who would eventually pay for it.
The money would have to come from somewhere.
I agree that the lower the taxation equals more money.

Lots of people left this country in the 60s and 70s because of taxation among other reasons.

I used to go to property auctions with my family. Lots of places still had clothes hung in wardrobes and bathroom cabinets full of toiletries as people had packed in a hurry and left.
My family bought a house off someone who had built it as their dream home but emigrated to the US. They had to leave by a certain date or face a massive tax bill.
A lot of people did leave the country to go abroad. I seemed to go to these type of places at least once every week.
The problem we had were these people were the factory and business owners who faced with unionisation, rising wage bills, rising tax bills and inflation whilst living in a cold northern town of a country who’s government treated them as the enemy who needed to pay for everything. Working in the sun, living by the sea, a cost of living that was far more manageable and countries who would welcome them bringing their money with open arms seemed like a better alternative life.

@ListeningQuietly

Blackberry The USA, Canada, France and Germany all have land taxes. Not sure what farming has to do with it. The highest land values are urban.

I lived in Canada. It is very similar to council tax and is payed by renters too.

The USA do have property/ land tax but it is not a good advertisement for it. It leads to social segregation as people are forced out of areas rising in value. New York is a city for the rich now. It means the rich/ middle classes live very separately from the poor.
This is a good example though of the problem with Labour right now. There seems to be huge enthusiasm in some quarters for taxation as some kind of punitive measure. I have seen it on many threads here with the bile directed at pensioners and their homes. It is not appealing to many.
There also seems to be huge faith in the idea that higher taxes will fix the problems in the NHS and education. Most see that the problems are more complex. Some of the problems involve funding but without fixing other issues it will not give us a Canadian health care system. It certainly wouldn’t fix many of the issues with our education system.
Taxation should be simple and easy to collect. It should also be mainly income based ( including inheritance which is a form of income). Anything else is an attack on lifestyle and choices. Some save, some spend. Getting rid of allowances/ loopholes would be a good start. Percentages on all income should be aligned with income tax ( share dividends etc. and capital gains). I believe this is under discussion as it is a clear discrepancy.

I was watching New Labour videos recently, look at how Blair actively appealed to Tory voters:

Has modern labour done anything similar? They mostly tell anyone that disagrees with themt o F off to the Tories

That is such a good clip. There's another one, can't link but when TB was on Question time before he became pm. Such an inspiring speaker and actually answered the question !

Tbh I don't think all labour supporters tell people to F**k Off if they disagree.

@Onetoomuch

Tbh I don't think all labour supporters tell people to F**k Off if they disagree.

But several of the senior people in Labour have told feminists to fuck off if they disagree. That’s the problem.

The obvious stuff like not making themselves the enemy of women’s rights has been covered.

Council tax should either become a tax on the owner of the property rather than the tenant or be income based on the tenant. I’m a low earner and my monthly council tax on a 2 up 2 down and the cheapest rental available is 13% of my NET salary. It’s no good bragging about how low earners don’t pay income tax on earnings under 12k when they pay council tax totally out of proportion with their earnings.

They need to win back public sector workers and stop bloody joining in with tories demonising trade unions.

They need to understand that a huge section of their voters are not unemployed and living in council houses but working poor in privately rented housing trying to get ahead but crucified by rent costs and council tax and low interest rates that effectively mean any savings they do have or manage to deposit are losing value rather than gaining.

They need to lose the middle class navel gazing woke people and policies.

I could go on but have only read the first page and I’m guessing it’s all been said already. Definitely decent apprenticeships and alternatives to degrees though.

@Onetoomuch

Tbh I don't think all labour supporters tell people to F**k Off if they disagree.

There are enough that Labour feels like the "nasty" judgy party nowadays

@Onetoomuch

That is such a good clip. There's another one, can't link but when TB was on Question time before he became pm. Such an inspiring speaker and actually answered the question !

There's another good one where he took on an activist in a party conference. Never seen a PM do something like that

Definitely decent apprenticeships and alternatives to degrees though

I agree about alternatives to degrees though Isn’t Labour to blame for the huge increase in university places?
I begged both my children not to go to university as neither are interested in academic work. However they wanted to do what their friends were doing and their clinching argument was that so many jobs require a degree.
So off they went to uni - what a waste of time and money (though they had fun and made lots of friends).

They need to understand that a huge section of their voters are not unemployed and living in council houses but working poor in privately rented housing trying to get ahead but crucified by rent costs and council tax and low interest rates that effectively mean any savings they do have or manage to deposit are losing value rather than gaining.

This.
Stop importing identity politics from the USA and focus on economics.

@Andante57

Definitely decent apprenticeships and alternatives to degrees though

I agree about alternatives to degrees though Isn’t Labour to blame for the huge increase in university places?
I begged both my children not to go to university as neither are interested in academic work. However they wanted to do what their friends were doing and their clinching argument was that so many jobs require a degree.
So off they went to uni - what a waste of time and money (though they had fun and made lots of friends).

Labour were last in power 11 years ago.... when will tory supporters start taking responsibility for their own Govt's failing?

Uni's have been allowed to offer too many soft degrees and have become multi million pound businesses, thats down to governments failing to regulate them.

As for apprenticeships, Labour have been calling for this but like most Lab policies, they aren't on peoples radar or are grossly distorted i.e. income tax.

and its the Tories that have made so many young people leave with huge debt, 3k per year is one thing but 9.25 per year is day light robbery.

Bluethrough yes, everything you say is correct but I don’t know how the Tories, or any party for that matter, can turn the clock back re increased numbers of university students.
As I said in an earlier post, so many jobs require a degree to even apply.

@jaiii sorry but I don't feel judged by them
"They need to lose the middle class navel gazing woke people" why lose them ? Their vote counts as much as anyone elses and they should be just as welcome as salt of the earth w/c types. Why should w/c people done good who consider themselves, god forbid, middle class be excluded ? Are all m/c labour voting people woke ? To me this obsession with wokeness is just another word for anti pc, to go with liberal lefty hand wringing do gooders and more associated with right wing views....
"Stop demonising the trade unions" Ironically a lot of ordinary w/c people have sucked up the story that trade unions are full of prehistoric socialists like Len Mccluskey and play no part in protecting the rights that unions fought for back in the day. Good luck in changing that.
Agree that a huge section of their voters aren't dispossessed and extremely poor living on sink estates but the 'just about getting by' so policies should also directed at them.

@jaiii that clip is awesome, can't see Kier doing that.

I didn’t mean get rid of middle class voters sorry I worded that poorly.

I’m technically middle class by profession but still skint.